Tag: carrie contey phd

Carrie Contey, PhD is the co-founder of Slow Family Living, not to mention a super dear friend of mine. She has wise things to say about babies and children and parents too and I feel lucky to get to have her visit our “lab” of 4 children and 2 parents. It helps immensely!

Recently we were kind of struggling to understand the resident 6 year old as he made his way through the world with some big, giant emotions. Woosh! It was sometimes hard to take.

And then, something busted through. He is learning to read. And the other day? He started dancing like a madman. Truly could. Not. Stop. Himself. Tap shoes were flying and everywhere he went he was like an animated cartoon moving fast and furiously.

Today Carrie writes these wise words…

You know when your child is acting in ways that are hard to handle?

I’m talking about the times when that little growing person is doing the things that push your buttons and make you want to SCREAM (and sometimes you do)?

It was in 2007 that I joined forces with Carrie Contey, PhD to form Slow Family Living. It came out of our work together – writing, dreaming, doing classes and workshops, scheming and dreaming some more. Since then Carrie and I have worked together on different projects together sharing ideas and stages, and also worked on our own individual projects – books, classes, workshops, and more.

In the past 2 years I’ve been writing and readying my book, Slow Family Living; 75 ways to slow down, connect and create more joy. In those same 2 years, Carrie’s work has been the creation of a year long project called Evolve. It is about parenting, partnering, personhood and prosperity. It is about making the life and connection you have with yourself, your kids and your partner the very best life it can be. It is babysteps delivered all year long, which are super easy to take, towards more joy and more connection and more understanding of why you are you.

I have been lucky to be involved in her program for the past two years and to see it from the inside out. It is the perfect blend of science and emotion and practical information and it is amazing. I’m not usually a salesperson but truly, it has changed my life.

So if you want to be a calmer parent and have a better understanding of yourself giving you more emotional resilience, if you want to feel better, communicate easier, have more connection with your kids, more intimacy with your partner, more abundance in your life and in general find more joy, balance and be the best you you can possibly be, you should click here.

There are relatively few game changers we experience in our life. For me, Evolve has definitely been one of them.

Oh! And if you sign up for her program before midnight on Sunday night (1/20/13), you’ll get a free copy of my book delivered to your door immediately upon its release on March 5th! Making you possibly the very first person on your block to have a copy in your hands.

Mother’s day is coming. The day to celebrate, appreciate, laude and commemorate. As it approaches I think, oh, it’s a gift shop holiday, who cares. I remember my own mom implying sort of the same thing except for the year my mom, who never swore, said to us kids as we were simultaneously handing her cards and fighting over the last something or another, “Oh mother’s day, schmothers day, it’s all bullshit.”

Do you dismiss mother’s day as just another hallmark holiday? But then when the day arrives think things like, “hey, how come you didn’t do anything for me???” As kids it’s hard to know what to do. Make a card of course, but then what? Make a fuss? Leave mom alone? Celebrate her all day? Or just give her space to not mother for a few hours?

My friend and inspiration, Carrie Contey has written up a great little post on just how to avoid falling in this trap. How to figure out what we want and how to make it happen without requiring those around us to interpret our thought process. As she so eloquently puts it - stating what you want = getting what you need. Done and done!

However you choose to spend it, whether your kids are big or small, near or far, I hope you take a little time to celebrate and honor your own self. I plan on starting the day with a few appreciations of my own, state my time for a little time alone in the morning, and then after that, I’m just gonna go with the flow. Outside. Where the flow is sometimes a little easier to get into.